Episode 188: Bonfire

1) The Pegs discuss their recent game plays including Origins: First Builders, Coatl, Steven Universe Beach-a-Palooza Card Battling Game and many more;

2) All the Pegs review Bonfire; and

3) Look back at Sorcerer City.

Show Notes

00:01:10 – Trivia: We Smurfed This One Up

Banter

00:05:35 – Pros and Cons of Cons

00:10:17 – Oceans Piranha Pig Promo Card

00:15:20 – Video Games We’re Playing

Plays

00:22:14 – Origins: First Builders – Board&Dice; Designer: Adam Kwapiński; Art: Zbigniew Umgelter, Aleksander Zawada;

00:30:47 – Last Aurora * – Ares Games; Designer: Mauro Chiabotto; Art: Davide Corsi;

00:40:48 – Project L – Boardcubator; Designer: Michal Mikeš, Jan Soukal, Adam Spanel; Art: Jaroslav Jurica, Pavel Richter;

00:50:42 – A Word from Our Sponsor, Queen Games

00:51:42 – Quetzel * – Gigamic; Designer: Alexandre Garcia; Art: Nastya Lehn;

00:58:30 – Coatl – Synapses Games; Designer: Etienne Dubois-Roy, Pascale Brassard; Art: SillyJellie;

01:08:00 – Steven Universe Beach-a-Palooza Card Battling Game * – Cryptozoic Entertainment; Designer: Erica Bouyouris, Andrew Wolf

News

01:17:45 – Forteller Games Providing Narration for Above and Below

01:20:28 – Upcoming Virtual Cons

01:22:40 – Gloomhaven Comics

01:24:48 – Terraforming Mars: Ares

01:27:50 – Castles of Mad King Ludwig Collectors Edition Kickstarter

01:29:30 – Sagrada Legacy

01:31:18 – MORE DICE!

01:37:29 – A Word from our Sponsor, Grand Gamer’s Guild

REVIEW: Bonfire

01:39:11 – Rules Breakdown

Bonfire is a 1 to 4 player action select title published in 2020 by Pegasus Spiele, with art by Dennis Lohausen and designed by Blue Peg, Pink Peg favorite Stefan Feld.  In Bonfire, players take on the roles of gnomes attempting to light mystical bonfires to please the Guardians of Light.  To do this, players will manage resources, complete tasks, recruit other gnomes, and carefully manage their available actions through clever tile laying and matching.

A player’s available actions are driven by how they manage the placement and arrangement of their landscape tiles.  Each landscape tile is made up of three squares, each corresponding to one of the several actions a player can take, and each landscape tile having a different distribution of actions.  At the start of the game, a player’s tiles are randomly shuffled and arranged into a column, with one tile reserved to be used immediately.  That tile is placed in a designated spot on the player’s personal board, which contains a grid where all future landscape tiles are placed.  Then, the three action chits corresponding to the tile are claimed.  

From here on out, whenever a player has 1 or 0 action chits at the start of their turn, they may select a new landscape tile from the top or the bottom of their column and then place it on the board.  The tile must be placed adjacent to an existing tile, and depending on its location and orientation the player may receive bonuses: extra resources if certain tiles are covered on the board, and then additional actions if players manage to lay their tile so that one or more squares are adjacent to a group of the same action.  In this case, the player receives a chit for the landscape tile placed, and one additional chit for each matching action in the adjacent group.  

In this way, players are guaranteed at least three action chits every time a landscape tile is placed, but may gain many more with good planning and clever tile laying skills.

In addition to claiming new action chits through their landscape tile, a player may take one of any number of actions on their turn.  As a general rule, taking an action requires spending one chit of the appropriate type, and in addition might require one or more resources.  In some cases, paying more  than one chit of an action type might be required – for example, to sail your boat to more distant islands, or to claim Task tiles from an island from which you have already previously claimed a task.

Actions will have you interacting with various areas on the board: from claiming gnome cards that will give you ongoing bonuses or end-game scoring benefits, to rotating the Great Bonfire and claiming various resources and benefits, to sailing the ocean to gain new tasks and celebrant meeples for your player board.

Ultimately, players will be trying to claim path tiles to create a path on the perimeter of their player board, to claim and complete tasks which will then turn into bonfires on their board, and move their celebrants along those paths to those completed bonfires to gain points.

In true Feldian style, players will score points in a variety of ways.  While some will be scored during the game, the vast majority are scored at the end.  Points will come from the value of the completed bonfires, whether bonfire and path colors match, how far along the path your celebrant(s) are, leftover resources, and many more.  Depending on player count, the end game is triggered when a certain number of your gnome workers are sent to the Great Bonfire, five more rounds will be played via an interesting counter mechanism, and then final scores tallied.  The player with the most points – and, presumably, the best bonfires – wins the game.

01:42:53 – Review

02:07:57 – Ratings

02:15:08 – A Word from our Sponsor, AEG

ReRoll

02:16:19 – Sorcerer City – Druid City Games; Designer: Scott Caputo; Art: Lina Cossette, David Kegg, Damien Mammoliti;

Check out our original review for Sorcerer City during Episode 163.

Gameplay Photos

* Disclosure: These titles were received free of charge by the publishers or distributors. If you are interested in submitting a title for review, please read our Review Policy.